Red Velvet Oreo Cake

Step One: Preheat the oven to 350°F and prepare two 8 inch round cake pans. Spray the inside of each pan with cooking spray. Cut round pieces of parchment paper out in the shape of the pans and place one into each pan. Place Oreos into the bottom of the pan in an even layer until you can’t fit anymore (16 Oreos per pan). Make your buttermilk, then set aside.

Step Two: In a medium bowl or large measuring cup, combine oil, buttermilk, vinegar, vanilla, food coloring, and eggs, then set aside. In the bowl of a standing or handheld mixer, combine the flour, sugar, salt, baking soda, and cocoa powder. 

Step Three: Add the butter into the bowl with the dry ingredients and use the paddle attachment on your mixer to mix it together with the dry ingredients until combined and somewhat crumbly. Pour the wet ingredients in and mix until combined and there are no more lumps.

Step Four: Divide the cake batter between the cake pans then bake for 22-32 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the middle of the cakes comes out clean.

Step Five: Let the cakes cool in the pan for 20 minutes then transfer to a cooling rack until completely cooled. Meanwhile, make the Oreo buttercream. 

Step Six: Crush the whole Oreo cookies up using a food processor, or put them in a ziploc bag and roll over the bag with a rolling pin. You can also finely chop them, and make the chunks as large or as small as you’d like (I like to use a mix of crumbs with some big chunks as well). Set aside.

Step Seven: Add vegetable shortening (or butter if not using dairy free butter) and butter to the bowl of your mixer, then mix until smooth, then add the vanilla and salt. Add in powdered sugar ½ cup at a time until your desired consistency is reached. If the buttercream is too thick, add in 1 teaspoon of milk to thin it out.

Step Eight: Add in the Oreo crumbs (and chunks) into the buttercream. Cover and refrigerate until the cakes have completely cooled. Assemble the cake layers (see tips below) and enjoy!

Assembling The Cake

When you remove the cakes from the pan, you can leave them to cool upside down on the cooling rack, which helps flatten out the top of the cake. This makes it easier to stack the layers! 

To assemble the cake, put the thickest cake layer onto your cake plate, cake stand, or cake board. Top it with a big scoop of buttercream and spread it around with an offset spatula, leaving about an inch of unfrosted cake around the outside edges.

Place the second layer of cake on top, then freeze the cake for about 15 minutes. After 15 minutes, remove the cake from the freezer and use an offset spatula to frost the cake with a small amount of frosting. 

Smooth it out using a bench scraper, scraping the crumb filled frosting into a separate bowl so that the crumbs don't mix into the rest of the Oreo buttercream. Don't worry if it’s not pretty, as this is your crumb coat and this layer will be covered. Freeze the cake again for 15 minutes, then add the remaining frosting to the cake, then decorate!

If you want to learn about how to decorate a cake more in depth, here is a great beginner decorating tutorial.

How To Make Buttermilk From Scratch

If you don’t have buttermilk, or if you are making this cake dairy free, don’t worry - it’s actually super easy to make your own! Add 1 cup of milk to a measuring cup (my favorite dairy free milk to use for buttermilk is soy milk, but any kind will work). Stir in 1 tablespoon of white vinegar and let it sit for 10-15 minutes.

The milk will start to curdle (I find it doesn’t curdle as much with oat milk, but it still will add that tang to the milk). Since this recipe only calls for one cup of buttermilk, be sure to pour out some of the buttermilk once it’s ready so that you only have one cup of liquid (not one cup plus 1 tablespoon).

Decorating The Cake

Here are a few fun ideas for decorating this red velvet Oreo cake!

• Make a chocolate ganache by melting chocolate chips and coconut cream (or regular cream if not dairy free) over the stove and then drizzling it over the buttercream.
• Pipe buttercream or stabilized whipped cream on top of the cake
• Top the cake with crushed Oreos or mini Oreos
• If you’re making this cake for Valentine’s day, add some red and pink heart sprinkles on top!
• Add a few drops of red food coloring to the buttercream to add more pops of red to your cake! It will be a dark red.

Cake Pan Size Adjustments

Here are a few adjustments in case you would like to make your Oreo red velvet cake in a different size pan:

3 Layer Cake: The easiest way to convert a 2 layer 8 inch cake into 3 layers is to simply divide the batter between three cake pans. With this method, you’ll end up with thinner cake layers, since the cake batter is divided between three pans instead of 2. Another option is to multiply all the ingredients in the recipe by 1.5.

9 Inch Round Cake Pans: The cake layers will be thinner and will bake quicker. Start checking on them after around 16 minutes in the oven.

9x13 Rectangular Pan: To make this into an Oreo red velvet sheet cake, use a 9x13 pan, then bake for around 20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean. Since there aren’t multiple layers for a sheet cake, you can halve the Oreo buttercream recipe.